Mr. Speaker, I am going to give a concrete example to underline the importance of having the UN involved and maybe demonstrate to the House and hopefully to Canadians that we do have other choices than the ones in front of us and the one that the government has taken.
Consider that the UN right now has, and it was instituted in 2005, the UN Peacebuilding Commission, headed by a Canadian, hired on merit, not because the Canadian government was able to provide the resources so that she could be hired. She was hired on merit. The interesting thing, and my colleague from Burnaby is absolutely correct, is that we need the UN to provide leadership here and one of the institutions would be the Peacebuilding Commission.
Consider this, Canada does not have a seat on the Peacebuilding Commission at the UN. We do not have a seat. Many would note this around the world the one country that people look to when we say “peacekeeping and peacebuilding” as having been responsible for that, the Pearsonian tradition, yet we do not have a seat on the Peacebuilding Commission. Why? The criteria for being on the Peacebuilding Commission is the following: a country needs to have sufficient peacekeepers in the field. We do not. The Security Council has a rotation. Finally, a country has to make sufficient contributions to the UN and we do not. Alas, we are not on the Peacebuilding Commission.